September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (39 page)

“What?”

Acid burbled in my stomach. The idea
of moving, talking, breathing, or having to do anything was absurd.
It was over. Nothing came next. There was nothing left. There was
no reason, just plain nothing.

Utterly lost, watching
Avery’s long hair as she wrapped it into a neat bun, I noted that
her moves were kind of jerky, halting in a strange rhythm that
matched the beat pumping from the radio on the nightstand.
Was she dancing?

“Angel, you’re just along for the
ride. I’m taking care of this.” She offered what I think was
supposed to be an encouraging smile that ignited me.

My arms wrapped tighter over him. I
looked down at his sallow face and offered the only thing I could:
my word. “I’ll fix this, I swear.” I didn’t have anything left, but
there was something I had to do. For him. It was a stupid promise
and impossible to keep and I had no idea how I would even try, but
then . . . something happened.

There was noise. A loud
banging.
Thump, thump, thump.
Then,
Avery was talking.
I couldn’t understand anything she was saying. Once my ears caught
the beat coming from the radio, I couldn’t hear anything else. I
wanted to stop her from saying whatever the hell it was, stop the
irritating music, stop the world—but couldn’t think of what to do
to make that happen.

Another impatient thump,
coupled with a familiar bellow. “I know you’re in there!” It was
coming from the door. The voice of Deanna. All I could think was
her name and the security it brought:
Deanna!
She would know what to do.
She would help. I wanted to jump and scream, and shout at her to
look around, to explain to me what was happening, but none of that
made it to the surface. I could only hold him.

Avery must have opened the door,
because suddenly Deanna was inside the room and they were
talking—rambling actually—but it all sounded like mumbling over the
blood pumping in my ears and the music on the radio.

After Deanna’s arm dropped from my
shoulder, I realized she had been touching me. Avery was saying
something again. It sounded like a cough. I threw up on Deanna’s
feet.

Through whatever was going on: the
noise and voices, the indifferent rap music, the cruel light that
showed how green he’d become, how still and lifeless . . .
something else happened.

It was only my mind playing tricks on
me, but it felt so real—it anchored me in the moment. My magician,
my Houdini—the man who could take any broken thing I gave him and
make it right—opened his eyes. It wasn’t real. I knew that. It was
just my mind trying to comfort me by making me see the thing I
wanted most, but the relief of that lie helped me focus. So when
his lips seemed to move, I knew to lean in and pressed my ear to
his mouth.

He magically whispered a
single word—
the
word that had been evading me in my search for what to do.
The one I couldn’t find before or after I realized it was
him
on the floor of my
room and not just a pile of dirty laundry. My chest burst open. I
think I screamed, because suddenly my voice was the only sound to
be heard.

I don’t know how I got to my feet. I
don’t remember seeing Avery or Deanna as I opened the door. I
wasn’t consciously moving. I just flew. I might have been screaming
the whole time, I don’t know, but I remember the hot, predawn air
grazing my skin as I hammered on every door I saw on my way out to
the road. It was early—only a hint of pink was on the horizon. I
scrambled to the roadside, thorns and pebbles digging into my feet,
but it didn’t matter.

Waving my arms, frantic, I
kept screaming—begging for someone to come. Demanding help. It was
like the second I heard the word, I couldn’t stop repeating
it.
Help, help, help, help, help,
HELP!!!

A brown station wagon was on the road.
I thought I saw it slow down, but it didn’t stop. Then, a
motorcycle, too. And another car—a tan one—I flew over the yellow
line into the far lane, still screaming Jakes’ plea.

“HELP!” It was my mantra. The one
thing I needed, the only thing I could try to give Jake, even
though it was too late.

The car screeched and swerved. And
then my hands were on the hood, and then I was flying. Floating.
The sky became the ground. Cacti sprouted from brown
plumes.

And I was burning.

Still screaming.

+++

My default state in this interview
room: my face, coated in snot and tears.

“Miss Patel, did you say you saw your
former guardian, Deanna Midler that night?” Tight Bun Tara’s face
holds a strange expression beyond her squared
spectacles.

My throat is too clogged with emotion
to clarify, so I nod.

“And you clearly recall leaving the
motel room?” Tara continues.

“That’s enough for now.” Mister
Brandon murmurs. “Take a deep breath. Breathe in the blue calm . .
. exhale. In with the good, out with the bad.”

While I work to calm this
most recent emotional upheaval, my unhelpful lawyer announces the
obvious to the room: “She’s too worked up.” I believe he uses the
word
hysterical
in his next sentence. Says I should be sent back to my bunk
where I can take the remainder of the day to rest and recover from
the terrible stress of this conversation. Hearing the lame excuses
has me rolling my eyes. Yes, it’s difficult—but I don’t want to
stop.

I don’t point out that there’s no
amount of distance that can take me away from what’s buried inside.
I have to keep my mouth shut. Defiance has only ever left me
sedated to a stupor. Obedience means a measured walk back to my
unit—slow because the guards at each elbow are watching me snivel
and shake.

Tonight it’s easy to flush my dinner
down the toilet, sitting on my bunk afterward though— not so
effortless. My mind is still stuck in that dark part. When I’m
there, in the moments after, I can’t function.

Jake crumpled and lifeless on a bloody
carpet. The nearby wall smeared. A single pristine handprint—a wide
palm and five long fingers—etched into the eggshell paint. I was
down on the floor when I saw it; my gaze passing over as I looked
to the ceiling, praying for the world to end. I somehow know the
height of the print matched the level of Jakes’ shoulder and
knowing that makes me shudder each time I blink because I can see
him standing there in the small space between the bed and the wall.
He’s leaning against it, trying to stay on his feet. The images are
burned into my eyelids. So I don’t close them.

Instead, I tell myself lies: it never
happened, I am not in jail. There is no such thing as a new
millennium. I am not a murderer.

I fold myself into the
comforting lies my mind conjures: me, standing inside Jakes garage.
There is no tour to prepare for, no search for a second guitarist.
No lingering echoes of
“not yet.”
He never packed and moved. It’s quiet. Jake is
visiting his mom and Henry. Max is probably at work and Andrew, the
tattling asshole, is going to be replaced.

I am alone and at peace, staring at
the blown out half-stack I always sat on. Max’s drum set quietly
sits with the sticks lying in X formation on top of a tom. Jakes
favorite sunburst guitar is upright, on a stand beside the bass.
I’m seeing the numerous band posters and stickers tacked up on the
walls, but I am looking at the one poster that was different from
the rest.

My poet used to wax
philosophical sometimes. He once said, “Through the ages there have
been millions of quotable things said. Phrases that seem to fit
every situation.” Jake liked to collect words like that—the kind
that stuck with you. He had this cheesy poster in the bands
practice space with hundreds of quotes on it. That’s probably why I
can remember so many. His favorite one was a quote by Thomas
Edison:
“Our greatest weakness lies in
giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to always try one
more time.”
Jake never actually used it,
but he told me once that one line was why he bought the
poster.

I used to read it when the guys were
trying to work out a kink in a riff or transition. Some of the
quotes contradicted each other; like this one about how the
greatest gift you can get in life is friendship, but another said
health was the greatest gift. I wouldn’t know about either of
those.

I liked the one from Mother Teresa. It
went something like: poverty is more than being naked and hungry.
That being unwanted, unloved, or uncared for is the real poverty.
In that sense, I’ve been poverty-stricken from birth. Rejected by
the only family I had and passed around from house to house, barely
tolerated by most of the Fosters that took me in.

I think, if I had just one parent that
would have been enough. But my dad was a ghost. And my crazy-ass
mother never wanted me—not because she had anything better, but
because of her disease. I wonder, in her schizophrenic mind, if she
was trying to show me that she did love me by taking me with her in
the car that morning. Maybe she didn’t want to separate from me,
even in death. I could understand that.

There was another quote on that poster
about how there is more power is in rising after you fall than in
never falling. I like that one. But how can you get up when you’re
locked in freefall?

Another quote said
something like,
Freedom is something you
have to win
—and maybe it is. For the ones
who still have hope.

I think being remembered is the
greatest gift. It is the only thing I can give to Jake. I can burn
my candle and think of him. I can sing his songs. I can remember
him. I can never make up for what happened, but I can keep vigil
until I find him again in the next life.

+ + +

41

—Avery

If I had met Angel at any other moment
in her life, I would not have felt a need to protect her. It’s a
no-brainer. But I first saw her at a pivotal point: the moment of
her breaking.

Literally, one moment I was watching a
group of cranes drink from a puddle between the trees, and the next
I was watching her bones fracture. That boxy car rolled down the
road: a little bump before it took a short flight from the
pavement, then flipped. Something small and white burst from the
space where the windshield had splintered into a million tiny
shards and landed in the crook of two unsure tree branches. A small
tree, planted several years before was innocently growing beside
the roadway, and by pure chance, it caught her.

I’ve seen some shit in my life, but
that was, by far, the most terrible one. Something inside me burst
as I took it all in, and I knew that I had been put there for a
reason—that I was supposed to take care of her. That I was meant to
keep her from ever having to go through anything like that ever
again.

Okay, so I didn’t always make the best
choices, but none of this shit has been painless on my side. If
anything, I have suffered more. I realize it wasn’t easy on her,
but she needs to understand that I have always, only ever took what
she gave me and dealt with situations as they came up.

There’s no prep course for this shit.
No one’s ever written a guide on how to be second-best. And let’s
face it; that is all I have ever been.

I was just trying to
protect us. How can she
not
get that?

Angel and me are different types of
particles—maybe even opposites—but we’re made to cling to one
another to achieve balance. Or we could be like what my high school
science teacher said. He said that outer space is black because
light particles need other particles to grab onto. Since space is
basically empty, there is nothing for the light to hold. So it just
keeps traveling, never touching anything until it enters earths’
atmosphere and finds something to cling to.

Angel is the light.

I am the one hurdling through the
outer nothingness. Searching. Grasping.

Space and I have a lot in common. If
only I could have known sooner, maybe I would have studied harder.
I could have become an astronaut. I could have landed on the moon
or docked in a space station with a Russian dude named Vlad. He
might have held my tether when I went on a space walk. And I
would’ve cut that tether, joining my emptiness with the great
vacuum of the beyond. I might have found some peace.

I can’t believe my shit for luck. I
should be the one the review board is talking to. Angel’s just
gonna tell them whatever she wants and I’ll have to live with
it.

Being powerless is a feeling I will
never be comfortable with. I just won’t. I’ve tried. I’ve been
taking the backseat through this whole damned process.

Maybe I haven’t pressed hard
enough.

+ + +

4
2

—
Angel

Hopefully, today is the last I’ll have
to suffer through. When I’m done serving up my guts on a platter, I
can go back to Canyon View to rot and wait for death to take
me.